The Gift of Acceptance
by flitchoftherivers
Summary: Merry/Haldir. This sounds a bit stiff to me, and to add to the thrills it takes place in Lothlorien, one of the most overused places (I think) for slashfics. But I did manage to tear myself away from Aragorn and Legolas, at least for a while. (Not sure


            "_Manan ely etevanne_

_            Norie I melanelye?"_

The elves' lament for Gandalf still filtered among the shadows and blue light of Lothlorien when Merry felt a hand on his shoulder.  He jumped from where he'd been staring into the shallows and would have fallen forward into the stream were it not for a yank at his collar.

            "It would not be wise to stray into unknown waters," murmured a lyrical voice behind him.  

            Merry steadied his footing and turned to see one of the elves who had led them into the Golden Wood earlier that day.  "Sorry," he muttered.  Then, remembering his manners, he added, "I meant no harm to you or your wood."

            "Even if you did you wouldn't have got far.  I'd defend these trees with my life…"  But Merry had turned back to the whispering stream and the elf fell silent.

            "_u-reniathach I amar galen…"_

            "What are they saying?" the hobbit spoke after a time.  His voice was heavy and he didn't trust his voice with too many words.  "Legolas—we asked, and he wouldn't tell us."

            "It is late," the elf answered instead, this time from beside him.  He had sank to the ground beside Merry without the hobbit's noticing.

            "Fine then, you won't tell me."  Merry leaned his head on his hands and remained silent, not even looking to the water but off toward some point beyond the shadowed tree trunks, perhaps where the mournful singing stemmed from.  After a long while he heard the elf rustle next to him.

            "It is as you would expect.  'No more will you wander the green fields of this earth,' they sing.  'Your journey has ended in darkness.'"

            "So will ours," Merry thought.  He didn't realize he'd spoken aloud until a pale hand dwarfed his shoulder.

            "You worry?"  The elf forced Merry's smaller body around to where their eyes met, but his voice was gentle.  "You falter in your quest?"

            "How couldn't I?" Merry cried, lurching away and to his feet.  "Gandalf is dead!  _Gandalf,_ who survived that whole mess with Bilbo and gods know what else—Gandalf is dead!"  His shoulders slumped; his voice fell below all but elven hearing.  "What hope do the rest of us have?"

            "Do you know my name?"  Merry turned to look at the elf, who hadn't moved, and shook his head.  "I am Haldir.  Loyal elf of Lothlorien for more thousands of years than I imagine your family can trace back."  At any other time Merry would have spoken out for the superb genealogists found in the Shire, but now his heart was too heavy to care.  "As such, I am privy to many things not revealed to others.  I know what the Lady Galadriel said to your company."

            "Then you know what—" Merry blurted.

            "I know that she said there is hope.  And if she says it, it is so."  Haldir overrode Merry's outburst without a blink and waited.  His silver elven garb caught the pale light of stream and star and niphrendil flower, causing him to shiver in the hobbit's sight.

            "I don't see how."  Merry expected the elf to slip away silently as was the tendency of his kind, and was startled out of his sulk when that long, pale hand again touched him, this time on the back of the neck.

            "You will." 

            Merry risked a glance up at Haldir and found an elven smile, pale and eerie in the blue shadows.  "I…" he stammered.

            "The halflings are a strange folk, I am learning."  As he spoke, Haldir kneaded the knot of muscle at the base of Merry's neck with the barest of movements.  "Oblivious to the world and its turmoil, they huddle in peace and prosperity on their tiny patch of grass for generations unknown…"  His fingers gained momentum when he was not turned away.  "Until one of them prompts the trust of one of the greatest wizards this land has ever seen, overcomes all odds set against him, and brings up a nephew to whom the greatest task ever known is to be delegated.  And after all this, they find it in themselves to doubt."

            "Ahh…" Merry sighed, rolling his shoulders into the elf's touch.

            Haldir smiled down at him.  "I can feel the strain in you.  It must take a terrible toll each day."  He bent close to the hobbit's ear and whispered, "Will you not let me take your burdens from you, if only for a little while?"

            Merry jerked around in the elf's grasp.

            "Do they not approve of such things in your Shire?"

            "How did you know the name of my homeland?"

            Haldir smiled.  "Gandalf the Grey, may Elbereth keep him, was terribly fond of both our peoples.  He told us much.  But," and he replaced a hand on the hobbit's shoulder, "you're leading me off the topic."

            Merry's brows knitted in a frown, but he did not shake off Haldir's hand.  "No.  No, it's not that at all.  I only fear…"  He looked to the stream and its myriad reflections of stars and flowers and golden leaves.  Of the two of them.  His hands balled into the fists and he turned with a cry, hurling himself at the elf.  "Oh, why?  Why did he have to die, Haldir?"  His fists flew again and again against pale skin and silvery garb both, and Haldir did not flinch.  "he was the only hope we had!  He was our leader!  You act as if I'm wrong not to keep hoping, as if it wasn't all over!"  Dimly he became aware of arms around him, clutching him, but he could sense no more through the great sobs that wracked his body.  "He could have ran.  We were so close—we could have made it!"  The arms around him hugged tighter; bound his flying fists to his sides.  Right before his throat constricted he managed to whisper, "He knew it."  Merry gulped back the lump in his throat.  "He knew he was going to die."

            "He did."  Haldir's voice, soft to begin with, barely rose above the elves' lament.  "As I said, Mithrandir came here often.  He was a friend to us—no, to all the elves.  His death brings us a pain we don't often feel."  Now Haldir held Merry away from him so the hobbit was forced to meet his eyes.  "But even the pain of his passing has a purpose, Meriadoc Brandybuck of the shire.  Don't you see?  We elves are now facing what your people and men and all free folk face always:  death, loss, the sting of winter without end."  He caught Merry's chin before it sank to this chest, holding the hazel eyes up to his own.  "And now that we feel what you feel," he whispered, "how can we let you fight alone?"

            It took a moment for this to filter through Merry's grief and fatigue.  When it did his eyes widened brimming anew and he opened his mouth to speak.

            But Haldir put a finger to the hobbit's lips.  "No, the Last Alliance was not the last…"  He brought his hands to Merry's shirt buttons, "Nor would I have this one be only between Men and Elves."

            "You have faith in us, then," were the only words Merry could squeak out.

            Haldir paused in his unbuttoning to focus his full attention on the teary hobbit face before him.  "I have more faith in you and your kin, Master Merry," he intoned, "than in all the elves in Imladris."

            "And your Golden Wood?" Merry asked, forcing a smile through rivulets still drying.

            "I place my faith in one and the same company.  The Elves of Lothlorien will not abandon friends of Mithrandir."

            And then Haldir's hands were upon Merry, brushing and rubbing and kneading the hurts of months of traveling from the body.  "The hurts of the mind take longer to mend," the elf provided, leaning forward and touching his lips to the hobbit's quivering chest.  "But I will do my best."

            Merry buried his hands in the long blonde locks of the elf and clenched there as if for all eternity.

*    *    *    *

            Dazed and shaking from his meeting with Galadriel, Frodo made his surreptitious way back among the ancient roots and paths of Lothlorien, craving sleep even though the dreams it brought were sure to clutch with dark fingers.

            At the edge of the clearing where the Fellowship had been granted rest, the hobbit froze.  slowly and with all the sound  a shadow makes, a sliver-clad form extricated itself from the promenade of tree trunks opposite Frodo and began approaching the snoring forms of the other halflings where the sheltered in the arms of a particularly large root.  Frodo despaired at the leaving of Sting in his bundle but balled his fists, preparing to launch himself at his friends' attacker.  Only at the last minute when silver gave way to a mop of dark curls did the hobbit pause.

            "Sleep," the silver being, discernible as an elf now that he'd come closer, soothed.

            "But...but…"

            "Close your eyes and sleep.  No harm will come to you here."

            With a start Frodo recognized the ruddy body in the elf's arms as Merry's own, and the elf himself as their guide the previous day.  he held his breath and lay flush against a tree, straining even skilled hobbit ears to catch the whispered conversation.

            "I didn't do anything for you!" Merry cried, or at least that was what Frodo thought he said.  "I didn't—"

            "Yours was the gift of acceptance."  The elf laid Merry tenderly down, brought a bundle from under this arm and began to dress the small, limp form on the moss.

            "…have to carry me…"

            "…hardly a strain…"

            Their talk was growing fainter.  Frantically Frodo searched for a way to get closer without being seen; he even for a moment considered donning the Ring just for a little while, just so he could hear the words between his friend and this strange elf.  But he never had to resort to such means, for in his nervous shuffling he crushed a bit of bark underfoot and the elf tenses from where he was buckling Merry's belt.

            "We have an audience," the elf enunciated quite clearly.  Then, even louder, "Be sure never to forget the hope of your race."  The elf rose then and, quirking a smile directly at the spot where Frodo hid, made as if to slip off into the woods on the far side of the clearing.

            But Merry's sleepy voice stopped him.

            "Haldir?"

            The elf turned.

            "Thank you."

            Smiling, sparing not a glance this time for Frodo in his corner, Haldir glided back to Merry and planted a kiss squarely on the sprawled hobbit's lips.  Then he left in a flurry, even snapping a twig in his haste, and it seemed to Frodo that there was something wistful in his walk.  

In fact, if the hobbit hadn't known better, he could have sworn that those pale eyes glimmered not with the lights of the Lothlorien night or simple elven beauty, but with tears.


End file.
